Day: September 16, 2013

Jeremy Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing

As part of the Oxford Literary Festival, the Jeremy Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing is being awarded for unpublished short stories with food and drink at the heart of the tale. Submit one story, maximum 2500 words.

Prizes:  £7,500

Reading fee:  Free.

Deadline is October 1, 2013. For more information, please visit their website.

Indies Unlimited is pleased to provide this contest information for the convenience of our readers. We do not, however, endorse this or any contest/competition. Entrants should always research a competition prior to entering.

Focus

Ways to bring focus to your writing world

It gets crazy with all the events, work, social media, family commitments, and pure clutter that crop up every day. Not that some of these things aren’t important; they are. However, to be successful in writing, you need focus.

With focus, you become more efficient and the process becomes repeatable. Focus allows you to concentrate on what your abilities can do, and where they can take you. We have many excuses—time, money, insecurity—the list goes on. Continue reading “Focus”

Featured Author: Dr. Hi-Dong Chai

A native of Seoul, Korea, Hi-Dong Chai was educated in the United States. He received a Ph.D. in engineering. After working for IBM for 19 years and subsequently teaching at San Jose State University for 15 years, he retired in 2002.

After retiring, as one who lost his loved ones through WWII under Japan and through the Korean War, he decided to share his life experiences through writing.

My Truest Hope was published in Guideposts magazine in 2012. He e-published Blossoms and Bayonets, a fictionalized version of his family under Japan co-authored with Jana McBurney-Lin, in 2012, and also Cindy and a Korean Boy and Shattered by the Wars in 2013.

His next project is to complete his American story: A 16 year old Korean boy comes to America in 1953. He struggles to support himself overcoming hunger and loneliness. He persists and receives a Ph.D. and establishes himself as an authority in his field. The message of the story is that in America if you are willing to give all you have, you can attain your dream.

More of his work can be found on his website and his Amazon author page. Continue reading “Featured Author: Dr. Hi-Dong Chai”

Mentally ill? I think not!

It is commonly accepted that there are a disproportionate number of introverts among writers. Writing is, fundamentally, a solitary pursuit. Even when books are co-written the authors often correspond mostly online.

There is also a belief among some mental health ‘experts’, based on faulty science, that introverts comprise a small minority of the general population. A touted personality test, called The Big Five system, suggests that introversion is an aberration, that we are, (depending on the ‘degree of introversion’), essentially abnormal. It places everyone on a sliding scale, with extroversion as ‘positive’ and introversion as ‘lack of extroversion, as somehow ‘less’ and therefore negative. They posit that introversion is maladaptive and needs to be moderated or treated if we want to be ‘normal’ and happy. Depending on the “degree” measured by this test, this has even led to introversion being labeled as a mental illness. Continue reading “Mentally ill? I think not!”